FROM

May 20, 2010, I attended an entertaining debate between ex-cattle rancher
turned vegan Howard Lyman, author of Mad Cowboy, and Nicolette Hahn Niman,
author of Righteous Porkshop and wife of Niman Ranch founder Bill Niman. The
event was co-sponsored by VegNews Magazine and Earth Island Institute and
held in the impressive David Brower Center in Berkeley. (I know, where
else?)

The subtitle of the event asked the question, Can you be a “good
environmentalist” and still eat meat?

Full disclosure: this is not an objective review of what transpired.
Having spent many years as a vegetarian and now mostly-vegan, I’ve thought
long and hard about these issues and I’ve concluded there is no moral
justification for eating meat. I decided to write this post because much of
what I heard last night was not adequately addressed by the speakers and I
want to add my own thoughts.
The two authors began by agreeing that factory-farmed meat is a disaster and
has no place on our planet. The debate boiled down to whether or not
humanely and sustainably-raised animals were a viable alternative to the
current system, from both an ecological and ethical perspective.

Ms. Niman certainly held her own when it came to the scientific and
environmental arguments for sustainable meat, disputing Lyman’s claims that
any type of animal farming harms the planet.

But when Niman tried to argue that animals were essential to sustainable
farming, she never did explain why they have to be killed in order to be
part of the closed loop system she espouses.

Once the discussion turned directly to the ethics of killing animals for
food, Lyman easily had the moral high ground. And Niman herself seemed
uncomfortable making several tired and twisted arguments.

First, she said that humans have been eating meat for hundreds of
thousands of years, so it’s a natural part of our diet. But humans have not
been slaughtering cows and chickens for all that time. It’s certainly true
that humans have eaten meat throughout our evolution and Niman was right to
correct Lyman when he claimed that we are natural herbivores. Humans are
omnivores, which simply means that we can eat both meat and plants, not that
we have to. The dispute is really whether we should.

The anthropological evidence is clear that early humans either ate the
leftover meat that was killed by carnivores (when was the last time you
chased down an animal and bit into it?) or killed small animals like
rabbits, all for the purpose of survival when little else was available.
Since modern agriculture kicked in (along with modern marketing), humans
have been brainwashed to eat a diet mainly comprised of animals, but that
was not the diet of our ancestors. Rather, they subsisted largely on nuts,
seeds, and fruit, and it is such a plant-based diet, according to decades of
established science (not to mention Michael Pollan) that humans thrive on.

Next, Lyman and Niman disagreed on just how much destruction is caused by
our conventional food system in general. Niman tried to argue that all food
production causes harm to animals, presumably from various disruptive
farming techniques. Lyman dismissed this argument by saying there’s a
difference between nematodes and cows, to which Niman responded that she
also meant wild animals.

I am willing to accept the argument that conventional farming methods
causes harm to animals, and that vegans cannot claim that their eating
habits cause no harm. But because wild animals are harmed as a by-product of
plant production is not a reason to deliberately raise and slaughter more
animals who would never exist in the first place. Why not try to minimize
all animal suffering?

Niman then proceeded to bury herself even deeper in the ethical morass by
making the astonishing claim that animals suffer a lot in the wild, since
it’s such a dangerous world out there, and aren’t they better off under the
care of humane, kind ranchers like her husband? This sounded chillingly like
the arguments for slavery. You know, blacks were really much better off
getting free room and board and they weren’t treated all that badly were
they?

This argument once again fails to acknowledge that there is a vast world
of difference between animals in the wild (who yes, have to navigate all
sorts of dangers, that is nature and cannot be helped) and the breeding of
countless animals who would otherwise never be brought into this world.

Next, Niman had to explain the disconnect between how she herself is a
vegetarian and her defense of humane meat. She said in many different ways
that being vegetarian is a personal choice and that she does not try to
persuade others to make the same decision. But isn’t factory farming also an
ethical issue and isn’t she trying to persuade those to perpetuate those
immoral business practices to stop doing so? Why do her ethics of caring
about how animals are treated stop at the point of slaughter?

Moreover, it’s an ethical cop-out to claim that being vegetarian is a
personal choice. Of course it is, but that doesn’t mean we cannot as a
society recognize moral standards we expect others to follow. We do it all
the time in many contexts. For example, when we say murder is wrong, rape is
wrong, driving too fast is wrong, etc. You name your law, I will give you a
moral argument that backs it up.

I am not saying we should out-law meat eating, but claiming a decision is
“personal” does not take it off the table for discussion. Again, slavery is
a helpful analogy. At one time, slavery was acceptable, thought to be a
personal choice (but of course, only for the owners, not for the slaves;
similarly, the animals do not get a choice). In time we recognized as a
society that slavery was immoral and then we outlawed it. That is the
natural course of the evolution of human values. Our treatment of animals
has also evolved over time and it can and should continue to do so.

When asked if she ever bonded with an animal, she talked about a cow she
and her husband loved so much because she was “special” and so they decided
to give her a “pass” from slaughter. How lucky for that animal, and how
unlucky for all the others on the ranch who apparently were not special
enough.

During the Q&amp;A session, I tried to ask Niman how exactly sustainable
meat could ever work on a mass scale considering that her husband’s own
company failed to live up to difficult economic challenges. (See this
article for how Niman Ranch was forced to merge last year with its largest
investor due to economic hardship; Bill Niman himself left the business back
in 2007 over ethical standards disputes.)

She bypassed the heart of the question, instead explaining how an
academic report showed that it’s theoretically possible for humanely-raised,
sustainable meat to feed the world, but only if people cut down on their
meat consumption, a concept which she supports (on this point we agree).

But she failed to acknowledge that in our current profit-driven,
capitalistic society, it’s extremely difficult for anyone who wants to run a
business “ethically” to compete, again, as her own husband learned the hard
way. Lyman tried to make this point by saying the system is rigged in favor
of the large, unethical producers. This is exactly right, as the recent oil
disaster also proves.

Moreover, I don’t hear any “eat less meat” messages coming out of the
American Grassfed Association. Rather, you can learn at an upcoming meeting,
about “growing your grassfed business.” And herein lies the rub. In order
for any large business to succeed in our economy, it must grow or die.
Growth and sustainability simply do not fit in the same sentence.

At the end, Lyman got to the heart of the ethical question when he asked,
would the Holocaust have been OK if the Jews had stayed in 5-star hotels and
been fed lavish meals before they were escorted to their deaths? This to me
sums up the moral conundrum that people such as the Nimans must face.

Last night, I became more convinced than ever that humane meat is an
oxymoron.

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer whose first book, Appetite
for Profit, exposed food industry lobbying and deceptive marketing.

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